


Fall into the night with you

by ZaliaChimera



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Affection, Apocalypse, Blood, Blood and Gore, Canon Typical Horror, Eye Gouging, Eye Horror, Eye Trauma, Fear, Humanity, Injury, Love, M/M, Monsters, Reality Bending, Rituals, Weirdness, Wings, canon typical worms, eye eating, eye removal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 10:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19851157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: It's the end of the world, and Martin has one more thing to do before it is the end of him too.There is a calm wrapped thickly around the Institute, the eye of the storm, and Martin climbs.





	Fall into the night with you

**Author's Note:**

> This is a deeply weird piece of writing, and I'm not sure I really got what I was going for, but it was interesting getting there anyway!

The world is ending.

There is a calm wrapped thickly around the Institute, brittle as glass, and cloying, making Martin’s steps feel like he’s walking through syrup. The eye of the storm.

He’d laugh at his own joke, but just breathing is a struggle right now. Blood fills his mouth and he turns to spit it out onto the pristine white marble floor of the Institute lobby. The movement sends pain shooting through him. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, breathing harshly and clutching his jumper close against the worst of the gaping wounds on his body. The blood has already seeped through it in places. He’s amazed he’s still able to move, but chalks it up to adrenaline and being half a monster and sheer stubborn will.

He is going to die. He knows that with unshakeable certainty. It’s almost comforting. So little has been certain for him in his life. And now he knows that he will die.

He just- he just needs to make it to the Archives first. He just needs to _see_ that Jon is okay, that the world is ending in a way that keeps him in it, no matter what form.

Once that would have worried him. But now… now it is too late for regrets.

He reaches the door down to the Archives and wrenches it open. Every muscle screams at him, and every survival instinct echoes it as he stares down at the abyss that the staircase has become. 

It is not dark; there’s no room for darkness in this new world, but reality has worn thin here most of all, at the centre of all things, and the stairs stretch on forever. Martin braces himself and takes a step down, and then another, until his broken body remembers the movement and he can almost believe that it is effortless.

One foot in front of the other as he descends. The stairs are steep with no sign of ending and Martin knows that the Archives have never been that far underground. Twenty steps at most, though he’s never counted, but now he counts thirty, fifty, a hundred, and has to lean against the wall to steady himself a moment before he continues.

The pain has settled into a gentle numbness and he keeps walking. The stairs are endless and the further he goes, he realises that they do not lead down, but up and up and he is climbing a tower so vast that he can’t even imagine it. The walls flicker and distort around him; now bare grey stone, now the magnolia paint of his office, now the endless dark shelves of the Archives. Filled with too many stories to comprehend. It would take lifetimes to even begin to catalogue it, and the part of him that is still Beholding’s itches for the work.

Something crunches and pops beneath his feet, and Martin glances down. The stairs he walks on are covered in a thick blanket of writhing insects, silver worms and ants, and as he takes another step, the air fills with buzzing flies, the scent of decay thick in the air. Nausea coils in his belly, and he remembers those hours, those days trapped and waiting to see them come writhing through the gaps around the door and window.

Still he climbs, until his feet hit solid stone again.

There is music in the air, and violent, flashing colour. There is someone ahead, just far enough that Martin can’t catch up, but he recognises them, and calls out- “Tim!”

The figure turns, and Martin reaches for them, and it’s Tim’s eyes, Tim’s hair, and a smile that fractures his face like broken plastic.

He recoils, and they’re gone.

Still he climbs.

The music swells and hardens, from lilting steam organ to shrill pipes and bugles and the sound of drums. There is so much blood, and he nearly slips when he comes to the first corpse, torn apart in frenzied joy.

He hurries past, climbs and climbs until corpses become nothing more than meat and he cannot tell if it is human or animal, or something else altogether.

Still he climbs.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been climbing, but there is sweat dripping down his forehead, the back of his neck, staining his already ruined shirt. He wishes that Jon wouldn’t have to see him like this. But Jon has already seen everything so he doubts it matters.

The heat swells and grows, coiling about him like a living, physical thing. It scorches his skin, and he remembers videos of firefighters walking into blazing forests, skin seared and he knows that if he stops he will melt like so much spent wax.

Still he climbs.

The steps shift as he climbs, soft, wet sand sticking to the soles of his shoes, then the sides, each step pulling him deeper and deeper. His ankles, then his knees, hips and chest until it’s pushing at his lips, and no matter how hard he presses his lips together, it finds its way in. It forces its way down his throat, salty and gritty and he can’t- can’t _breathe_ , can hardly move and he’s so tired but-

-but he needs to find Jon. Needs to see if it was worth it.

He pushes onwards, clawing forward inch by agonising inch, and was this what Jon had felt when he’d gone into the coffin? The earth entombing him? He wonders if the tape recorders had helped.

He has to find Jon.

It is dark here, dark for the first time, where the world had been bathed in light, revealing everything, leaving nowhere to hide. It should be comforting, this darkness that hides all, conceals how very tired and very scared Martin is.

Instead Martin feels like he will never see the sun again, and every childhood nightmare comes back to him. Hiding under the covers while his parents argue. The monster under the bed or in his wardrobe. Walking back from a club a 3am and wondering if tonight was the night he ended up as a statistic.

Something behind him. Not the ever present watchful gaze, but something hungry and following him through the darkness and he speeds up, breathing running ragged, bloody in his throat and all he can do his flee.

And still he climbs.

He climbs until he feels something more than the endless dark void. Threads, sticky and fragile, which cling to his fingers and his face. He feels the movement of them, the brushes of coarse hairs and many many legs.  
Ah, but this was never one of his fears, and he wraps his fingers into them, and uses them to haul himself onwards and out of the endless darkness.

The light returns all at once, and he stops, arms thrown over his eyes as he tries to readjust to vision.

When he finally squints ahead, his heart soars and trembles, and his stomach lurches. The wall is gone and he is on a narrow ledge and beyond it, below his feet and above his head is nothing but endless pristine blue sky.  
He sucks in a breath and and curls in on himself in the face of this expanse. Who is he to be here? To be climbing this tower in search of something beyond his comprehension? Meddling in things he can’t hope to understand. Stupid child who will never amount to more than a pawn.

But he remembers Jon’s smile in better times, and the fear in his voice as they hid from the worms. The damage on his too human body.

He just needs to see him. Just once. And then he can die.

He should be dead already, but time isn’t working right here. Reality worn thin and punctured through, twisted and warped into something other.

He turns away from the sky, places a hand against the wall, a foot against the narrow step that is barely a foothold, the only stable thing, and he climbs.

The stairs widen with each step he takes. The stone twists and coils into impossible patterns, splinter and fracture into endless fractals with doors that cannot exist at the end of each endless branch. 

He feels dizzy and all directions are one, and none and there is nowhere to go. And everywhere and-

And still he climbs.

He expects the cold when it comes, the fog which rolls in around him and obscures the broken angles and maddening curves. He knows this. It welcomes him like a lover, caresses his skin with the chill. He could stop here, let it embrace him forever. He has already given up so much. What more is this?

The numbness in his fingers begins to sting. Martin takes a breath.

He climbs.

And climbs.

And climbs.

Finally he stops, and knows that he can go no further. This wide, empty platform, so close to the top, but so far. This is where Martin Blackwood ends. 

He snorts softly, and that becomes a harsh laugh. He leans against the wall and slides down, heedless of the blood which smears against the stone in his wake and starts to pool around him, like stopped time has suddenly started to speed forward and drag him along.

It hurts. It hurts so much. But it banishes the numbness. Banishes everything except this moment, at the end of all things.

“I’m sorry, Jon,” he says softly.

Martin Blackwood closes his eyes.

“I don’t think apologies are necessary.”

The voice echoes strangely. It is full of static that fills Martin’s head and settles on his tongue. Dim awareness fills him and he slowly cracks open his eyes.

The thing in front of him, its shadow stretching wider than should be possible, is not Jon. But it isn’t not Jon either. Bright wings stretch out from its body, and each feather is made from words writ in glistening black ink. They shift and ripple, writing novels with each movement. At the tip of each feather is an eye. They stare in every direction, unblinking and hungry, and Martin knows that they see everything he is, and everything that he has ever been. 

Jon- the creature that Jon is now, is naked, and the eyes dot his skin too, and all of them are fixed on Martin. All of them searching, all of them somehow _wrong_ , like they aren’t really Jon’s at all, though they cover his body. 

Martin’s gaze drifts upward, and part of him savours the sight. When was he ever going to see Jonathan Sims naked otherwise? He reaches Jon’s face. It is streaked with blood from the crown on its head, but his expression is not one of pain. It is curious, head tilted like a crow examining a coin.

But the eyes… Martin would know those eyes anywhere. Jon’s same deep brown, human and lovely.

“Jon…”

All of the eyes blink at once, like a shuddering running through the creature that had been Jon.

It stoops, wings folding around them, sheltering them both. It is so close that Martin can see every fleck of colour in the eyes that dot its torso.

“Martin Blackwood,” it says. The echoing voices wraps around him, and he knows somehow that Jon is tasting the name, learning everything that it means, everything it signifies. “You’re going to die.”

He gives a startled laugh and presses his fingers into the wound. “I know.”

But he’d got to see Jon again. He’s alive. Even if he’s not quite Jon anymore. He’s still there. It’s all in the eyes.

It left out a soft breath, brow creasing into a frown. “No,” it says, and there is more inflection in the word. “No. I don’t like that.”

“You- you can’t stop it, Jon.”

It sets its lips into a stubborn line. “You know, I rather think that I can.”

It sounds so like Jon. It makes Martin’s breath catch in his throat, and all he can do is stare. He knows that expression. The one Jon wears when he’s about to do something stupid and beautiful and brave.

“Do you trust me, Martin?” It- _he_ asks. 

Martin smiles weakly. The most powerful creature in the world right now, omniscient and ascendant, and he still hasn’t figured that out. 

“Of course I do.”

Jon nods. “It will hurt.”

“Everything does,” Martin says. “But it’s for you, so it’s worth it.”

He thinks that he sees a smile on Jon’s lips. Then fingers press against his eye, around his eye, digging in with implacable pressure. 

Martin screams, the sound pulling at his ragged throat. He feels liquid drip from his eye socket, feels fingers touch flesh that should never be touched, and twist and pull and then there is darkness and pain. He squeezes his other shut, gasping for breath and for the first time, he wishes that he had died.

Fingers touch his cheek, wipe away tear and blood and coax his head up. 

“Look at me.”

It isn’t a request, and in this new world, Martin is powerless to resist. He opens his eyes- his eye, and looks at Jon. 

In Jon’s hand he holds an eye. He hold Martin’s eye, still dripping and bloody. He studies it for a moment, and then raises it to his lips and eats it. Martin cannot look away, can only watch the way his throat bobs and tenses as he swallows.

Jon takes a deep breath, wings spreading wide. The skin on his chest bubbles and ripples and bursts open, bleeding and weeping. And then Martin sees it, the eye that peers out at him from Jon’s skin. His own eye.

Jon strokes a hand over it, possessive and pleased, and Martin shudders at the sensation that runs through him. He can- he can feel it. Not exactly like being touched, but like something plucking the strings of his soul.

Jon nods, satisfied and then all those eyes are turned back to him. “Thank you.”

Martin swallows. “Is that- is that what you needed?”

“It helps,” Jon says, and he is smiling now. That genuine one, the lopsided awkward one that is so human it makes Martin _ache_. “Let me help you.”

“I trust you, Jon.” And it is no less true now than it had been before Jon has ripped out his eye and left a ruined socket in its wake. What has he got to lose? The world has ended.

Jon takes his hand and guides it to his face, over his cheek and up towards his eye.

“Jon- what…”

“Take it,” Jon says. “Take part of me. Let me be yours like you are mine. My Martin.”

“I- I can’t.”

But his fingers are already digging into the flesh around Jon’s eye. He can’t deny it. Not here, not now, when all secrets are laid bare and every inch of him is known.

Jon gasps as Martin’s fingers begin to slide around his eye. It’s firm beneath Martin’s fingers, and distorts as he presses deeper and deeper until they can curl around it. Jon’s hands wrap around his wrist, steadying him as he begins to pull. He feels the moment it detaches and comes loose with a hideous snap, like a wire being cut.

Jon’s beautiful brown eye lays in his palm and somehow it is still staring at him.

The gore doesn’t seem to bother Jon. He smiles beatifically, and plucks it from Martin’s palm. The empty socket is already filling, reforming, and Martin knows that in a few moments, there will be another flawless eye staring out at him.

He reaches out towards Martin’s face again with the hand holding the eye. He touches Martin’s face gently and presses fingers carefully against the wound that had been his eye socket. And then he presses the eye against it, pushes it in to fill that aching void in his skull.

Martin blinks. Once. Twice.

And then he sees everything. Just for a second. Everything in the world, every person, every place, every secret, all of it laid out before him in glowing light and fear.

He blinks again, and then there is just Jon crouched over him on the floor of the Archives, his hair messy, and deep dark marks around his eyes. He’s wearing his usual shirt and waistcoat, as if this was some normal workday. Martin might think it was just a dream except that one of those eyes is not brown. Not anymore.

“Is it over?” Martin says, reaching up to touch beneath his own new-old eye. 

“Yes,” Jon says. “Was it worth it?”

Martin shifts, pulls the sweater away from his stomach and finds that the wound is gone. Might never have been. He isn’t sure how things work now. How do you continue when the world has ended and you think- you think you won?

Jon grasps his wrist. His fingers are warm and they stroke against Martin’s palm. “You just keep going,” Jon replies, to the question that Martin never asked. “I think.”

Jon stands and pulls him up. Between blinks, Martin sees those wings again, the thousands of blinking terrible eyes. 

“It takes a while to get used to,” Jon says.

He doesn’t let go of Martin’s hand. 

“I wanted to see you,” Martin says. “Just once. Before I ended.”

“I know,” Jon says.

“Well I need to say it anyway,” Martin replies. “Sometimes it’s telling the story that’s important, right?”

Jon smiles another of his lopsided, lovely smile. “I suppose you’re right.”

“What does this mean?” Martin says, and he’s not sure what he means. The world? The ritual? The two of them, pressed close in the middle of the Archives, changed but still themselves. Somehow, still Martin and Jon. 

Jon gives a soft hum, his gaze gone distant, seeking for knowledge that isn’t really something that can be Known. Finally, he takes Martin’s hand. And raises it, presses it against his chest over his heart. Martin blinks and he can see the eye there, his own eye grown anew in Jon’s flesh, forever a part of him.

“Oh,” Martin says, and his throat is filled with the thickness of tears and ache. 

“Stay with me,” Jon says softly. It is a plea and a promise all in one.

And Martin knows the answer. Knows that it could never have been any other answer. “Of course.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on [Tumblr](https://zalia.tumblr.com/)


End file.
